EEE DEV OOCOCOOOCECE EEC E: ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856) Dichterliebe, Op. 48: No. 1, Im wunderschénen Monat Mat Song eyele 1840 (oa) Langsam, zart. ferschonen Mo.nat Mai, cle Knos - pen spran - gen, die Lie . beaut - ge - gan.gen. Her . zen From Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe, Op. 48, ed. Max Friedlaender (Leipzig: C. F. Peters, n.d).348 |. 123 Roment SCHUMANN Dichterliebe:Im wunderschonen Monat Mai ~ derschénen Mo-nat —— 20 ——=—_—_ mein Sch . nen und4 349 _ FI SUOCUOC CECE KE: 123 ROBERT SCHUMANN Dichtericbe: Im wunderschonen Monat Mai tf Imwunderschénen Monat Mai, __In the marvelous month of May Als alle Knospen sprangen, when all the buds burst open, Da ist in meinem Herzen then in my heart Die Liebe aufgegangen. love broke out. Inwunderschénen Monat Mai, __In the marvelous month of May, Als alle Vogel sangen, asall the birds sang, Da hab’ ich ihr gestanden then I confessed to her Mein Sehnen und Verlangen. my longing and desire HEINRICH HEINE ——=+ Robert Schumann wrote the song cycle Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love) in May of 1840, his "Year of Song.” during which he composed over 120 songs. Dichterliebe consists of sixteen songs set to poems selected from the more than sixty in Heinrich Heine's Lyrisches Intermezzo (Lyrical Intermezzo, 1823 and later editions; the poem in the song presented here was first published in Heine's Minnelieder in 1822). Schumann arranged the poems to suggest a narrative, as the poet remembers and reflects upon the course of a love affair, from initial longings to heartbreak and resignation. He composed the cycle four months before he and Clara Wieck were married, while he was in the midst of a nasty legal battle with her father, Friedrich Wieck, who was trying to prevent the marriage. It is not hard to hear in the cycle an expression of Schumann's yearning to be united with his beloved and of the pain he suffered during their forced separations. The first song of the cycle, Im wunderschonen Monat Mai, sets two stanzas that each begin with the same line and contain the same rhymes. The parallelism of textual form and ideas prompts Schumann's setting in a written-out strophic form, framed by a piano prelude that returns as interlude and postlude. The poem happily describes springtime and a newly confessed love, but dissonances and tonal ambiguity give the music a sense of unfulfilled longing. Ironically, the very first harmony in this song about love is a strong dissonance (the major seventh between C#in the melody and D in the bass), while the bursting buds and singing birds of spring, prominent in the poem, are nowhere even hinted at in the music; such irony is typical of Schumann. The appoggiaturas and suspensions that begin almost every other measure, which Schumann added only in the final draft, reveal the bittersweet anxiety of the lover. Some suspensions in the piano are left unresolved (see the right-hand piano part in measures 9-12), adding to the tension as the vocal line builds to its climax. The key signature of three sharps would normally indicate that a piece is in either A major or F# minor, but the music in this song never commits to a tonality: the piano prelude twice states a half cadence in F# minor, the first two vocal lines cadence in A major, the next line moves to B minor, the stanza ends on D major, and then the prelude music returns, leaving the listener unsure of the tonic key. After a second cycle through the same sequence, the song closes on the unresolved dominant seventh of F#, prolonging the feeling of "Sehnen und Verlangen” (longing and desire).350 L123 Ropent SCHUMANN Dichterliebe: Im wunderschonen Monat Mai ‘The lack of resolution at the end matches the mysterious beginning, away from the tonic chord (whatever that may be!) and in the midst of motion toward a cadence. Beginning with what sounds like a middle and ending without resolu- tion, the song seems like a fragment, and the double cycle through a seri of chords that never reach a final resolution suggests the possibility of circling around endlessly-a perfect musical metaphor for the seemingly unfulfillable longing of the lover. The fragment was a quintessentially Romantic idea that Schumann cultivated in many of his works. Of cours here in the song cycle, the open-ended first song leads smoothly into the next, which establishes A major more securely as its tonic. ‘The melodies in voice and piano are fragments too, for the true melody of the song is shared between them. Comparing the right-hand piano part with the vocal line in measures 4-13 shows that sometimes the piano takes the lead (as at the b'-d"" and a'—d’" pickup figures in measures 4, and 6 before the voice enters on c#’), sometimes the voice takes the lead (as in measures 9-12). and at other times they move together. The opening idea in the prelude, with its striking figure of a rising sixth and falling steps, reappears in inversion at the end of the first full measure of the vocal line, further weaving voice and piano together into one unbroken melody. In this song, the piano is equal to the voice and is perhaps even the leading partner, since it contains the greater part of the musical fabric. The notation of the piano part offers indications that suggest how the pianist is to shape the music yet leave choices up to the player. Several notes have stems going both up and down, showing that they are part of asustained chord or melodic line as well as part of the steady sixteenth-note motion. Schumann was enamored of Bach, whose polyphonic thinking is evident here in the ways contrapuntal voices emerge from the texture. Slurs show how to group the rising waves, which often overlap, one ending on a high note as the next begins in the bass. The pedal mark- ing under the first note directs the player to press the damper pedal, holding the dampers off the strings and letting the notes ring. The next pedal marking does not occur until the final measure, where it is followed by an asterisk, directing that the pedal be released while the final chord is sustained by the fingers on the key- board. But the lack of pedal markings in between does not mean that the dampers are held off for the whole song, since that would blur the changing harmonies. Rather, exactly how to pedal is left to the discretion of the player, who must decide whether to release and renew the pedal with every chord (a typical solution), more frequently (to emphasize the contrapuntal lines), or more seldom (to allow some expressive blurring).